Victory
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They walked into the hall of human-alien first contact. The Doctor rushed ahead as her three companions slowly strolled behind her.
"All I'm saying is that the Edgar Allen Poe-bot they got to play John Wilkes Booth in that reenactment looked nothing like the real thing. I should know, I was playing a part on the stage that night, which again, I was not depicted at all in the reenactment…" The blonde woman said quietly her eyebrows pushed together in frustration. She turned to the threesome of people behind her. "You know first it was being buried in the remix of Carmen, now this; I'm really starting to think my attempts at revamping Earth music and stagecraft pre-20th century were a dud!"
"She takes us to a museum in the deep future and all she does is complain about the displays…" a young woman with dark hair whispered to the young black man she's walking with.
"Look at this!" The blonde woman tutted loudly. She ran to a glass panel of some piece of metal shrapnel. "Yaz, Ryan look, this is completely inaccurate!"
The two young people walked towards the blonde as the older gentlemen they were with seemed to be looking at other bits on display.
"It's just a piece of metal-" The young black man said shrugging. "Says it's part of a Cymbal a la King….?"
"That's what I mean! It's a piece of the Cyber-king…" She frowned. "Giant steam-punk robot threatening Dickensian London commanded by a mad woman who thought she could control the Cybermen…" She smirked and looked slightly cocky, gingerly rubbing her nose, "Of course I had to take it out with a hot air balloon…" She turned and read the plaque and frowned again, shaking her head. "Jason Pond…oh for crying out loud! It's only the year five hundred thousand eighteen check your sources; Jackson Lake! I'll have to write another letter to the board of directors!"
"Yeah about that Doc', shouldn't we, you know, be careful…" The older gentleman said quietly as he turned. "You know, knowin' 'bout the future and all that…"
"Well, that's why I brought you here now…so far in the future they get everything wrong about when you guys are about, and any accurate information you gain will be useless because it's so far in the future you're entire family line will have run its course or evolved into a new species before its relevant." The woman said smiling as she ran over to another box and pointed to a dusty rock encrusted iPhone. "For instance, Reeve Fobs? Please…."
"What's this then?" Yaz asked pointing to a large door. There was a banner that was draped over the top of the door.
The blonde woman looked up and suddenly became sullen. "I'd forgotten that was here…"
"The Last Great Time War…." Graham read the sign aloud.
"That sounds cool…finally something a bit more than dusty iPhones and robot plays!" Ryan said as he walked towards the door.
"No…no…" The blonde woman rushed in front of Ryan; her long coat flailing in all directions. "It's terribly boring…plus future stuff…Ooo dangerous!"
"But you said nuthin' 'ere was relevant, it's all safe and stuff." Ryan said and pushed passed the Doctor and opened the door. Graham and Yaz quickly followed.
The next room was an alien universe. The light from the room before faded as the doors closed behind them. It was dark and then a deep resonant voice rippled from the darkness as an image of a man with brown curly hair holding wires glided past them.
"Do I have the right…?" the voice asked as the image receded into the darkness.
Saucers flew by firing bolts of light towards planets, a galaxy burned.
"What is this?" Yaz asked.
"Cooler than Star Wars…" Ryan said as he watched a pitched battle between space ships and men in battle armor shooting.
"EX-TERM-INATE!" the metallic scream lifted everyone's head but the Doctor's.
"Oi, that's those Dalek things!" Graham exclaimed; he looked over to the blonde woman. Tears were in her eyes. "Doc' you ok?"
"The one thing they get right, huh…figures…" the Doctor said as she looked up. A blue police box was leading an armada of vessels best described in mundane terms as multi-dimensional squids writhing through reality that was smashing through a fleet of Dalek saucers.
"That's-that's the…" Ryan gaped. The scene swooshed through the TARDIS exterior into the console room where an elderly man with white hair and beard, wearing a bolero across his chest was fiddling switches.
"Who's that?" Yaz asked.
"It's me…" The blonde woman said almost ruefully, her lips pursed and she narrowed her eyes. "It's always me…isn't it…"
"You mean you fought in a…" Ryan started as he turned.
"My people, fought a war with the Daleks, for the safety of all of the universe…" The woman said quietly. "A war of deadly attrition, that warped worlds, erased civilizations, both sides caused so much damage, so I did what I had to; I ended it…" A scene warped past them showing three men, one was the elderly man from before, one was a lanky man with a bow tie the other was another skinny man with a long brown-coat all of them pointing what looked like sonic screwdrivers at a box with a jewel-topped button sticking out of it. The Doctor took a breath. "But even when I ended it, it didn't end…the Daleks came back, my people returned…give it enough time it'll start all over again; it's endless…"
"Actually-" an elderly voice spoke from behind the group. "I think you'll find that there was a final victory."
The Doctor turned to see an old woman walking very slowly forward with a cane. She had silver hair, curled and thinly cropped against her scalp. She wore a red dress. The old woman lifted a remote and pushed a button. The universe melted away and a new projection materialized around them. They were in a gray and charred petrified forest.
"This is…" The Doctor said as she walked around the holographic display.
There was a familiar grating sound. A blue box materialized in the middle of the forest. An old man stepped out. The Doctor immediately glowered as she looked at him. He was tall and stately with gray hair, gray moustache and wore a burgundy waist coat, with a dark blue scarf draped over his shoulders and a light blue cravat tied neatly around the color of his pressed shirt. A small girl in a blue winter's jacket and plaid dress followed him, and she was followed by two very confused adults.
"This is of course a reconstruction of the events as our records detail them…" the woman said.
"Who's records!? Not mine, that's for sure!" The Doctor protested.
The old woman sighed. "Of course as they say…the memory cheats…"
"I never looked like that!" the Doctor growled as she stomped up to the old man and circled around him as he staggered about comically, exploring the ravaged landscape. "I remember this clearly…so much is wrong, I was never that tall back then, I never had a moustache back then and I most certainly never wore anything so flamboyant as that when I was with…Susan." The Doctor stopped and looked down at the little girl. She swallowed softly and then angrily shook her head. "And Susan was much older than that…and they look nothing like Chastertson and Ms. Wright!"
"Who!?" The three people who had arrived with the Doctor asked.
"My granddaughter and my first…huh…my first TARDIS fam…" the blonde woman said tilting her head to one side. She smiled sadly as she watched them wander through the forest. She blinked and looked at her current friends.
"Wait, you were that old man?" Ryan asked.
"You have a granddaughter!?" Yaz looked shocked.
"Ditto, both of those questions, Doc'," Graham said pointing to the two younger members of the entourage.
"Not really that old man, that's completely wrong I never looked like that, I was more, black cape, and hunched, with thinner and longer white hair; I didn't have significant facial hair until Commodore Angry…and I was definitely grumpier back when this happened; I remember that distinctly…very grumpy…too grumpy…" the woman said as she watched the taller, more dapper, more technicolor version of her older self inspecting a metallic beast in the petrified forest. She furrowed her brow. "Hang on, this is the first time I ever met the Daleks!"
"It is like I said, Doctor, a long time ago…" the old woman said quietly. "You've been fighting this war since the very beginning - except you never knew it. They've been manipulating you since the very beginning; they weren't even coy about it. You were their anti-Dalek solution; their ultimate temporal weapon. Your 'escape' provided them with a perfect solution; you would be let go to observe the final destruction of the Daleks at the hand of the Thals….thus solidifying the fact that the Daleks would never become masters of time and space…"
"Who are you?" the Doctor narrowed her eyes.
The old woman turned and started to walk away. Her cane slowly clacking against the floor. She reached the door of the room and opened it slowly exiting. The Doctor bit her lip and rushed after the old woman grabbing the door before it closed.
As the Doctor pushed into the adjoining room she instantly became aware of the truth. The old woman was tutting as she walked around a console.
"Seriously, who are you!?" the Doctor growled. "A Time Lord, that's obvious…nice TAR-" she looked at the center column it was a sphere with two entwining rings twirling around it, "-DIS…impossible…"
"Improbable…maybe, but I'm very clever, nothing's ever impossible then…" the old woman said quietly with a mischievous smile.
"But you-" The Doctor started.
"Body or it didn't happen as the cool kids say." The old woman's smile transitioned from mischievous to potentially maniacal. She looked up at the Doctor with cold, blue eyes. The maniacal look suddenly disappeared and she looked down at herself and shrugged. "No, I survived, impressive…considering that I was your first casualty of war…but you could never kill your rivals all that efficiently; could you?"
"Why? Why all of this?" the Doctor asked looking at the old woman.
"I'm old now, Doctor, tired…not much time left now…" the old woman replied quietly. She winced as she looked a weak flicker flashing under her finger nails. "No not much time…will's there; body's spent though. She looked back to the Doctor. "But you should know, deep down in your hearts that you won…and you did it without knowing it before it began. And as aggravating as I may find it, you proved me wrong…proved everyone wrong."
The old woman winced and shook her head. She reached up and threw a lever. There was a silent hiss and the console room the Doctor was in disappeared. The Doctor turned around to see her confused companions standing with her in an empty field. Two yellow stars were shining in the sky and her TARDIS was standing on at the top of a knoll.
"Doc'?" Graham asked as he looked around him mystified. "Weren't we just in an old museum? Where'd it go…? What's going on?"
"I think…an old rival did something nice for me…" The Doctor said smiling softly to herself. "Right, fam, let's go…"
"Go? Where?" Ryan asked as they all started to trudge to the blue box.
"Onwards." the Doctor said cheerfully as she reached the TARDIS and unlocked the door.
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AN: I did it….it's all unified now…well except for the Frontier in Space/Planet of the Daleks inconsistency but I have an explanation for that, just not now…maybe…another time….
Also finally one with a happy ending!? I am hitting it today!